Is 2022 the Year of Ethereum L2s?
Arbitrum hits TVL ATH, Optimism getting cheaper, Metis on the rise...
Welcome to the Alpha Please newsletter. We curate alpha for you. That’s it; that’s the newsletter.
The Ethereum community has been patiently waiting for L2s to mature and finally help ETH scale.
There is good reason to believe that 2022 is the year everything comes together for L2s and we see actual adoption occur. There is even a hashtag, so it must be a thing - #L222
Let’s see what has been happening with L2s in January and what Crypto Twitter has been saying.
General L2 thoughts:
So, what you are saying is if L2s have a great 2022 then ETH has a great 2022?
The L2 rotatoooooor…
Arbitrum
The biggest crypto exchange enabled withdrawals of ETH direct to Arbitrum. Kind of big.
Following on from this, Arbitrum TVL surged past the $3B mark and peaked at $3.8B, and is now sitting at $3.4B
So many people withdrew from Binance they have now suspended withdrawals again, but as David points out, this is a good sign.
There are more positive signs when you look at the deposits vs withdrawals data. Clearly people feel at home on Arbitrum.
Some dApps are having tremendous success on Arbitrum. $GMX has just surpassed $10B in traded volume. Defi Man will $GMX pill you if you so desire.
Treasure has been growing rapidly on Arbitrum, with $MAGIC the most traded token on chain currently. Check our Treasure newsletter for the rundown in this project.
Dopex, the options dApp, has been another big success story so far on Arbitrum. Never fade Tetranode.
This anon has put a very nice list together of other Arbitrum dApps you might want to check out.
A thought on NFTs.
Finally, wen token?
Optimism
Optimism had a slow start to its life in 2021, but it’s starting to pick up some steam.
It will be getting much cheaper, as will Arbitrum. Polyna has a 2022 prediction.
Putting this in the Optimism section, but AAVE will be deploying to both L2s.
Curve has also joined the Optimism party.
Nice list of Optimism dApps. Time to wake up, anon.
A shower thought for you.
zkSync
We love Argent and it’s just got so much more accessible for everyone. Affordable defi on Ethereum. Incredible UX. Based.
Plus Aave is also now integrated.
ZigZag exchange is also starting to see decent usage.
You might want to think about moving some ETH to zkSync. Just try and find a low gas window. You never know, you might get an airdrop if they release a token.
Other L2 chat
High praise for Immutable.
Immutable made history with this NFT launch.
There is a new L2 contender in Metis and it is gaining a lot of traction.
Ryan’s shill to devs.
Everything sounds great about this, but Plonky2… no comment.
Lots of good stuff so far in January 2022, but seriously, L2s need tokens.
For a general L2s overview it’s worth going through our thread from November:
And that’s your alpha.
Thank you for taking the time to go through our newsletters. Early analytics show most of you are delving into the content and we have had incredible feedback over the last few weeks and appreciate the support. Following our previous newsletter, we were approached by Pocket Network, to be a brand ambassador, which we tweeted about this week. Alpha Please will never promote any projects we do not believe in.
Sponsored Alpha
Pocket Network is running a great competition to reward the community with POKT. Check out the tweet to enter.
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Do your own research.